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Bill Belichick can’t believe he’s being asked if Tom

That’s the day New England’s Boys of Autumn return to work as the Patriots begin training camp in Foxboro in preparation for the 2016 opener at the Arizona Cardinals on September 11.

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There’s a slim chance for the New England Patriots to get Ryan Fitzpatrick, who now is in negotiation with the New York Jets with the big possibility of a failure.

The Jets did not seem to care Wednesday after checking in for their first day of training camp.

If that’s true, Gronk and Marty are quickly on their way to becoming bros.

After the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied a rehearing petition, earlier this month Brady made a decision to end his bitter “Deflategate” legal battle with the National Football League by dropping his appeal of the four-game suspension levied by Commissioner Roger Goodell way back in May of 2015. The New England Patriots have the capability go be back in the AFC Championship Game with core of their roster still in tact. Everyone from Bangor to Bristol was freaking out because New England had been shelled on Monday Night Football by a Kansas City Chiefs team that delighted in pounding the Pats in front of their home fans. Adding Martellus Bennett, who at 6-foot-7 and 275 pounds is an inch taller and 10 pounds thicker than Gronkowski, at the other tight end spot has to terrify cornerbacks and outside linebackers who try to stop them. But this training camp is really about Jimmy Garoppolo. This is definitely new territory for him. At age 27, and with a quarterback-friendly head coach, it’s time for Tannehill to assert himself as a top-level quarterback with his first winning season after going 29-35 in four years. “We play to get out there and get your opportunity, and when it comes, you’ve got to be ready for it”.

“We’ll do what we think is best. So it’s been great to be back out there”.

Because it was Garoppolo who took those first training-camp reps with the ‘ones.’ Not Tom Brady.

“Just his power of the ball, his accuracy going out there”, Gronkowski said. “We know what we have to work with, and that’s what we’re doing”. Because he’s as focused a human being as I’ve met anyway, but if you give him, you know…

“We obviously liked what we saw when we first brought him in”, McDaniels said of the pre-draft process in the year that Garoppolo was the fifth player at the position selected, behind Blake Bortles (No. 3, Jaguars), Johnny Manziel (No. 22, Browns), Teddy Bridgewater (No. 32, Vikings) and Derek Carr (No. 36, Raiders).

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Many Patriots fans have had many things to say about many different aspects of Deflategate over the course of many, many months.

Phil Stacey column: Fret not, Patriots fans: they'll be there when it counts